After a career in journalism, Clyde Linsley decided to pursue his first love, fiction. His first mystery novel, Death Spiral, appeared in 2000, and three more novels followed in rapid succession. The first of his three historical novels, Death of a Mill Girl, has just been reissued through the Author’s Guild Back in Print program. Other books: Die Like a Hero and Saving Louisa.

Carla Coupe is a member of both Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America. Two of her short stories—“Rear View Murder” in Chesapeake Crimes II and “Dangerous Crossing” in Chesapeake Crimes 3 —were nominated for the Agatha Award. Her Sherlock Holmes pastiche, “The Adventure of the Elusive Emeralds” appears in Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, Vol. 4.

Sasscer Hill’s “Venomous” is the second story in the Janet Simpson series. The first, “Pretty Fraudulent,” appeared in Chesapeake Crimes 3. Full Mortality, the first novel in Hill’s “Nikki Latrelle” series, will soon be published by Wildside Press. It unfolds against the backdrop of Maryland’s Laurel Park racetrack. The second book in the Nikki Latrelle series is set at Virginia’s Colonial Downs, and the third in the series will race just ahead of murder and mayhem at Florida’s Gulfstream Park. Hill lives on a Maryland farm and has been breeding and selling racehorses for more than twenty years. A number of her articles have appeared in the Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred.

Audrey Liebross, a contributor to Chesapeake Crimes I with “Sisters and Brothers,” has written a series of columns for Independent Agent magazine, which humorously presents technical insurance material. Audrey’s short stories have also appeared in Penny-A-Liner and Woman’s World magazines. Audrey is currently marketing her two unpublished novels, Chicken Soup Justice and its sequel, Oy the Bloody Bridegroom, both featuring Cindy Katzmann, a newly ordained Reform rabbi in a small, southern town. Audrey is an attorney who works for the federal government. She is married with three sons.

C. Ellett Logan spent her formative years in the Deep South, an experience that informs her settings, and troubles her characters, Southern-Gothic-style. Currently, she’s found the perfect home in Northern Virginia, and in the crime-fiction community. She landed a coveted spot for her short story “Backseat” in Chesapeake Crimes 3, and as president of Sisters in Crime, Chessie Chapter. Her novel in progress, Miasma, a word that means a dangerous emanation, is set in the swamps of Georgia’s low country, and exposes the internal quagmire of its characters’ lives. In her story in Chesapeake Crimes: They Had It Comin’, “Anchors Away,” Gina and Axel struggle to get all they think they deserve out of their lives. When it becomes clear that one of them will do so at the expense of the other, it’s more than bad feelings that get buried.

Debbi Mack is an attorney-turned-fiction writer. She's published one novel, Identity Crisis, a hardboiled mystery featuring female lawyer Sam McRae in a complex case of murder and identity theft. Her short stories have appeared in the first Chesapeake Crimes mystery anthology and The Back Alley Webzine. Debbi's also previously worked as a freelance writer/researcher, a news wire reporter, and a reference librarian. She's organized a fundraiser for dystonia, a rare movement disorder. A native of Queens, New York, Debbi and her husband share a home in Columbia, Maryland, with their three cats.

Bonner Menking is an estate-tax attorney working on a legal thriller about an estate-tax attorney who leads a far more exciting life than most of her peers. Bonner spent eight long months recovering from an ankle injury that was entirely her own fault. Her much less athletic cat, Mame, was blameless.

Lisa Tillman’s novel, Blood Relations, was nominated for the 2005 Agatha Award for Best First Novel. Her short story “Boo” was published in the anthology Gravity Dancers in 2009. A veteran television writer and producer, her work has appeared on Court TV, The History Channel and Fox. A freelance writer, she lives in Maryland with her husband and two children.

Erin Bush is a licensed private investigator, a historian, and new media director for a local magazine. She is hard at work on her first novel, set in her hometown on the outskirts of Pittsburg. An avid amateur photographer and cook, she is instilling her protagonist with her own passion for food and camera equipment. Erin lives in Northern Virginia with a menagerie of: four kids, four cats, and a husband. In the fall of 2010, Erin will enter the PhD program at George Mason University in History and New Media.

Becky Hutchison is vice-president of Sister in Crime’s Chesapeake Chapter, and a tireless champion for Chessie’s writers. Becky is hard at work, reading and writing, in her new office in her Annapolis, MD home.

Mary Augusta Thomas is the author of An Odyssey in Print: Adventures in Smithsonian Libraries, 2002, and editor of Information Imagineering: Meeting at the Interface, with Milton Wolfe and Pat Ensor, 1998. She makes her living as deputy director of the Smithsonian Institution Libraries. In her spare time, Mary Augusta serves on editorial advisory boards for two professional journals and reads mysteries.